Pre-Raphernalia

Our Pre-Raph Gang

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Our wonderful friend Stephanie Pina, whom everyone knows as the blogger of the internationally belovedPre-Raphaelite Sisterhood
(and lest we forget, the founder of Wombat Friday!) is in need of some
very costly medical treatment. All my commissions for this special
edition Sisterhood t-shirt will go to Stephanie’s fund: http://www.gofundme.com/t8yz2jw

Even if you can’t afford
a t-shirt, please consider donating just a little to help her and her
family in this rough time. And thank you so much on behalf of Stephanie
and all of us, her friends and admirers!

Monday, November 24, 2014

Sorry once more for having not posted new cartoons in awhile-- there area few new ones but I've been pretty busy on other unrelated projects.

It's no secret I'm a huge Doctor Who fan and it isn't that often that I get to do mash-ups of Doctor Who and the Pre-Raphaelites, but here you go: a drawing made for my photographer friend Sandra Franklin. She's been kindly providing me with transatlantic Who goodies and we often trade services. She wanted a picture of an Ood and I suggested a PRB version. (Whovians will get the various references.)

Because David Tennant is her favorite Doctor, I had him stand in for Proserpine in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's painting.

I needed something roundish that he could hold instead of a pomegranate, so I chose an Adipose.
Hopefully soon, I'll have an inked version of this sketch for Sandra done and I'll of course post it here.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

As you probably already know by now, the phenomenon of Wombat Friday was begun by Stephanie Piña on her wonderful Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhoodwebsite. It began with a stuffed wombat named Dante who would photobomb images of books and art prints every Friday. And it also frequently included food, preferrably cake. Very quickly, others joined in on the fun, including myself.

Wombats are quite photogenic when posed next to baked goods.

It became mandatory to obtain a stuffed wombat and we had many discussions about from where. (This was serious wombat business we were on, and yes, my co-workers at the bookstore thought I was nuts when I asked where I could find a wombat in Arizona.) People in Australia, of course, had it the easiest, but we non-Aussies managed to track ours down online from all sorts of sources. I finally got mine from Ebay, shipped from a toystore in Australia. I named her Christina, after everyone's favorite canvas-smashing poetess.

The staging and setups of the Friday wombat-fest became more and more elaborate as more people joined in. There was hilarious photoshopping and costumes and... well, see for yourself at the Wombat Friday Archives. Yes, it had become a madness, and a wildly creative one at that. The purpose of it was an appreciation for Pre-Raphaelite themed art and literature, combined with end-of-the-week looniness. (In my case, I posed Christina and my book collection next to bowls of my ludicrous attempts at homemade banana ice cream, and glasses of wine, among other things... but you'll see this silliness shortly.) The celebration became widespread enough to include even the National Trust and Red House, which began the Wombat Trail in order to introduce children to the wonderful works of William Morris and his friends. (And grown-ups liked it too. *ahem* Kirsty Walker talks about it here on her always-addictive blog, The Kissed Mouth.) Their gift shop even began to include stuffed wombats.

...Because of certain factors.
(My dog Ashi shows too keen of an interest
in wanting to "play" with Christina.)

But who knew a stuffed wombat could be controversial? (Kirsty addressed this conundrum quite brilliantly here.) This is how it became clear that wombats and Wombat Friday had officially arrived.

Though the wombat Top (notoriously named after William Morris, who was called "Topsy" by his close friends because of his abundant hair) is most associated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, wombats were beloved by all of his circle, especially Morris' best friend Edward Burne-Jones. He famously drew the best wombat cartoons of the bunch and some were even found underneath the faded paintings of the Oxford Union Library.

In which I pose Christina the Wombat with Burne-Jones books...
and Keatsian nectarines...

And finally, below are some of the photos I staged for several different Wombat Fridays:

Here are the more of the food-themed ones:
﻿

Trying for an Australian theme...?

﻿

The very first Pre-Raphaelite art book I ever purchased,
from the very first bookstore I ever worked.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Sorry for the lateness in new posts! I've been at work inking versions of the Pre-Raphernalia cartoons from my sketchbook drawings (they're all from my sketchbooks) in between other assorted projects. (See my other blog The Watcher Tree.) So my blogs have gotten a little behind as a result...

As I've said in earlier posts, I've been working on gathering the newly inked and lettered versions of the cartoons together for a book. It's not as fast a process as I'd like it to be, but I'm chugging away at it. I will keep you updated here with the latest. (If you want to see my own eccentric inking process, I talk about it here.)

Topsy and Ned Compare Sketches is probably the very first Pre-Raphernalia cartoon I ever drew in my sketchbook, just for fun and not expecting anyone would ever see it. The original post about it is here (where you can see the original sketchbook drawings), along with a quick history of these two wonderful artists.

And introducing Christina the Wombat, who makes appearances mostly on Wombat Friday.

Christina the Art Director Wombat inspects
the lettering process of Pre-Raphernalia.
"Seriously? You still use an Ames lettering guide?
How... archaic."